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Girlvinyl

Diaz saw how many likes and reblogs her response gained. It's going 1,600 notes, less than her mock strip that got 2,700 notes. I just want to enjoy the burn a male feminist got served by a real women.
*sipping wine reading Diaz boohouhou on twitter*

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Girlvinyl

Over the past few days we’ve already exchanged some words about this. I reblogged Mary’s comic lampooning your comic (and others like it), expressing my approval of its message. I also subtweeted your work fairly obviously. We are friendly acquaintances and my behavior was inappropriate and rude. I apologized to you via email for being passive-aggressive and thoughtless, and you graciously accepted my apology. I admit: what I did was hurtful, and the wrong way to go about it. With that in mind, I want to try to address the problems I have with your work in a direct, honest, and hopefully respectful way. No passive-aggression, no rudeness, no vague-tweeting.

Aaron, I have a real problem with the way you write and draw female characters. It is sexually objectifying and sexist.

I do not have a problem with artists writing and drawing objectified female characters. I do have a problem with characters I consider sexist, but ultimately it’s something I can ignore. There’s a place for everything, and an artist has the right to create whatever they want to create, for whatever ends they choose. What I have a problem with is that your comic is not presented as a science fiction comic with a dash of sexy thrills, but rather as a feminist narrative in support of powerful independent women. You’ve made it clear on many occasions that you don’t consider your work to be objectifying or sexist. I have a problem with cheesecake-style art being presented as something feminist, empowering, enlightened- something made “for women”, when it’s clearly made for men.

You’re allowed to make art with male gaze. But please call a spade a spade.

I think you are a nice person who does good things. I think you’re a good artist and a good writer. But I consider writing and drawing women to be one of your weaknesses, and it’s hard to imagine that you don’t know that. If you do, I haven’t heard you say so.

I know Mary’s comic stung. I’m not going to deny there was meanness there, although I saw it more as humorously exaggerated satire than a personal attack. I understand that it sucks to see your work roasted in such a way. But the criticism it made of your work resonated with a lot of people. They can’t all be idiots, crazy people, or “SJWs”, or people with a personal grudge against you. To paraphrase a saying, “If lots of people are telling you it’s raining, get an umbrella.” Aaron, many people have this problem with your work. The problem exists. And since you seem to be very much invested in feminism and positive, non-sexualized portrayals of women in media, you need to take a long hard look at your own output. You need to get an umbrella.

I don’t think I’ve seen a single page of Dresden Codak that doesn’t feature a woman posed in a male-gazey way, with loving focus on her ass or cleavage, or wearing a sexual costume, or in some situation that puts her in a compromising position (like the most recent page in which Kimiko’s clothing is burned off of her body, which has happened at least twice in the series’ run.) I have a very hard time believing that these details are accidental. Not to mention the pinups you posted a few days ago. Instead of saying something like, “Here’s some sexy drawings of Kimiko I did” you said they were about “agency” and “celebration of the female form”. It’s hard not to see language like that as dishonest and sort of insulting.

The following images are a few examples of what I’m referring to. I tried to only find examples from the current arc in the comic, or from merchandise you currently sell. I understand that there is a larger context to these images, but the fact that you continually write situations in which these presentations of women would be contextually appropriate is part of the problem. For the sake of fairness, there is ONE female character in Dresden Codak who is not presented sexually, but to me, that doesn’t do much to make up for the rest of it, especially since she is the only female character with a speaking role in the history of the comic who is not presented this way.

Aaron, you can do whatever you want with your own comic. However, if you really do care about female characters in media, or care to know why so many people seem to be angry with you about it, I would do one of two things. If you don’t want your comic to present its female characters in a borderline-erotic light, then stop doing that. If you don’t mind that, then by all means continue, but please just admit that you like drawing t&a and that it’s not particularly empowering, or feminist, or a celebration of personal agency. As a woman, I resent being told that men’s eye candy is actually meant to uplift me and that I should celebrate it.

I’m not trying to attack you or slander you. I’m certainly not doing this to stir up drama. I think you are a good person. And I think that you make a good comic. It’s obvious that a lot of people really love it and support it, and will continue to love and support it no matter what. There’s a lot you are doing right. But your work is not perfect, and I want to talk about it directly, honestly, and respectfully.

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Girlvinyl

Not a fan of her work but god damn that's gotta hurt
Could have done without the "I know it sucks to see your work roasted" padding, though, that's obviously there to try and keep his fee-fees from getting hurt too much

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EDF Elite

Not a fan of her work but god damn that's gotta hurt
Could have done without the "I know it sucks to see your work roasted" padding, though, that's obviously there to try and keep his fee-fees from getting hurt too much

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She also called him a good writer.

That's the other funny thing about this. Both of these woman are swj or feminists yet it went after them,The original comic was just saying of you like drawing big tits go for it just do not pretend you're serving a higher purpose. be honest.

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EDF Hero

You know, speaking of redesigns, I also found this on one of his pages and...

My bullshit detector has gone off in strides

I am going to focus on wonder woman here because thats the one I have the most problems with

Amazons werent Greek you idiot, and that goes for everyone who thinks that just because they are mentioned in Greek Mythology that this somehow makes them Greek. They are mentioned by Ancient Greek writers (Herodotus and Pliny especially) to be somewhere around Ukriene or even Turkey. Essentially, not Greek, and they are numerous times presented as wearing pants (a sign of a barbarian), or holding Barbarian arms.

The Fix: One part Thor, three parts Xena.

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Ah yes, Thor and Xena, the most classical of the Greeks that everybody thinks of and not a Norse fuckoff and Hollywood make believe bullshit from 1995.

Smooth

(Note: I am well aware that Greek statues were painted, but for aesthetic & thematic reasons it doesn’t work here. She’s just an old statue, so there wouldn’t be paint.)

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"I know this doesnt work but I am still sticking with it"

The whole white marbles thing is all based on a basic misunderstanding steming from the beginings of Archelogy in the early 18th century. I am not going to go to deep on this, but basically there was this myth of the Greek and Roman marbles that they were made like that in order to show all the muscles and that they reflected the moonlight to create this eternal glow and shit that lead lots of Archeologists and reconsustructionists taking Greek marbles and "cleaning them" off of dirt (paint), sometimes dropping them into pools of acids to wash off the paint.

But besides that, the whole reason why the Ancient Greeks painted their marbles was because they wanted them to look as real as possible. They would put them outside of temples and in public places as they wanted them to convince you that you were in the presense of the gods or of body perfections and the like.

In this case, why the hell wouldn't Wonder Woman want to get have her marble painted? Why wouldn't she want to look as real to a human being as possible? And so what if the paint worn off, what, did she paint it once and once it was worn out she was like "lol cant do anything about that now". Just get a few guys every week or after every fight or whatever to paint her marbles back, which would also make a good plot device and would work for character development.

"Traditional Greek weapon" part is a bunch of honk. First of, what era are we talking about, because Greece is not just classical Greece, and classical Greece is not just Athens and Sparta. Are we talking about before the Persian invasions? After them? Alexander and the Macedonians maybe? After the Hellenistic expansions and into the Roman conquests? Greece existed after that you know. Or even after that, with the Hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) and its respective changes to the military, such as Justinian, Heraclius, etc. Its also worthy to point out that not all Greeks were viewed equally Greek. The city states may have created a sort of identity that they would try to rally from after the Persian invasions, but that didn't exactly pan out greatly for them.

Secondly, he gave her the Xiphos, which as with the Roman Gladius, was not just found in Greece, but all over the Mediterrenean world. Greeks swords were not exactly 100% Greek, neither were the Egyptian ones, the Carthegeneans, the Romans or anybody else. Pretty much everybody stole or adopted or took notes throughout that entire period of each other's swords and incoporated it on their own.

As for the sword comment, it should be worthy to mention that a large amount of armies throughout history (Horse Archer Nomads and other barbarians withstanding) used spears and long arms as their main mode of fighting. Thats because the sword, like modern combat blades, was supposed to be a secondary use weapon, either for close quarters combat or for defense. Its not something that you go to a fight with intending to use first, and if you do, expect to get cut down by spears. The whole mythology of the sword as this timid weapons it propably fantasy novel bullshit and the like.

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EDF Elite

He wastes, so much time, on pointless bullshit. Plot-vital elements are only given a passing glance that can barely be absorbed while he'd rather show how morally corrupt the city is. Speaking of which, somehow that came off as really pretentious. Not to mention it was all a bunch of worn-out stereotypes of criticism we've heard time and again about materialistic societies. And there's a number of things in the comic that aren't explained or expanded on, and I just have to accept for what it is, like how I had to figure out that her cyber-eye could read elements, and having to just roll with her being able to connect herself into the internet to call people. How does that work, by the way? Can she receive incoming signals, did she have to crack some network keys or what? The level of advancement for cybernetic technologies seems pretty varied, is there any standard to fall back on, or is it hit-and-miss depending on who your mechanic is? How can her eye scan and read elements? Can it only read pure elements, or can it also read compounds, solutions, and other things? Why is her cyber-eye changing colors, especially in light of that magic deus ex machina on the most recent page? Wouldn't it make more sense for her normal eye to react that way to the magic, while her cyber eye remains blue and normal-ish? So many questions, so many things that could be elaborated on and really enrich the story, so many things with so much potential...

Overall it's pretty forgettable, I can barely remember what happened and I just read it. Makes me a bit sorry I wasted my time.

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九尾の狐

All of these problems are because his update schedule is so slow. He wants to show all this cool shit in his world and at the same time realizes he can't just wander about slowly explaining everything because then absolutely nothing would happen, but even if you discard all the crucial world-building and exposition his updates are so infrequent that the plot has to be cut down to the bare minimum as well, skipping everything that would need explanation.

In other words: No matter what Diaz says about his shitty schedule, it's the source of a lot of the problems with the comic. Though I don't know if his flawed writing would be even more apparent if he released more. Probably.

As you can tell, these designs blow serious ass. There is little to no consistancy in the clothing, they look to be from different time periods. One of the points of superhero designs is to make the character look powerful, like a hero. Yet these designs look so pathetic and reek of hipster.

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EDF Hero

I remember seeing those from a while back. I also remember his explanation for Wolverine/Logan is that since he's been alive for hundreds of years, he's real short since people were short back then. I think he also purposely de-sexualized Emma Frost or something.

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EDF Elite

I remember seeing those from a while back. I also remember his explanation for Wolverine/Logan is that since he's been alive for hundreds of years, he's real short since people were short back then. I think he also purposely de-sexualized Emma Frost or something.

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that's a retarded reason (for Wolverine being short). Plenty of people were tall even when the general population was short. Even when the average height of humans was less than today, there still were above-average tall people among them. Just like we have today - not everyone is tall. Simple fucking logic.
I think he made him short just to be as different as possible. Everyone draws Wolverine as a big strong man (...because that's what he is) so drawing him like a midget is all edgy and alternative and oh-so-original.
Which, by the way, seems to be most of the reasoning behind these redesigns. Plenty of the changes are there just to "be different".